Abstract : The present work is an attempt to put together the most relevant aspects of the engineering problems involving distributed parameter systems. Simulation and optimal control are explained in detail. The original contribution of this themis is given in Chapters 5 and 6, where modal control theory and a gradient subroutine that searches for the optimal reference coefficients are used. As a result, it was possible to obtain an output distribution better than the one achievable by the known methods. This technique works in situations of strongly nonlinear control and compensates the effect of having the analyzer and synthesizer approximated by low order matrices. It also makes it possible to give higher weight to some zones of the output distribution in order to have a better local fit. (Author)